Combine Ideas

Time to reach for another card from the Creative Whack Pack. Today's is: Combine Ideas. Let's see what it says.

"The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages - and kings." Combining unrelated ideas is at the heart of creative thinking. The ancients mixed soft copper and even softer tin to create hard bronze. Gutenberg combined the wine press and the coin punch to create movable type and the printing press. Joseph Pulitzer added large-scale advertising to high speed printing to create the mass circulation newspaper.
What different ideas can you combine?

Speaking of combining ideas, there is a wonderful set of articles in the current issue of The Economist called "A World of Connections" that discusses some of the interesting possibilities that arise when combining microprocessors and radio technology. If just a bit of this stuff happens in the next few years, it could significantly change the ways in which we think about the objects around us. Check out the above link for more articles on this subject.

Question/Exercise: In my previous post, "Death Notice of an Innovation Metaphor," I asked for new "innovation metaphors" to replace the light bulb. Let's go one step further: What two unrelated ideas can you join together to create a new "creativity symbol"? What two ideas combined say "aha" or "wow!"

Comments

[Elton Williams]

An egg cracking open to reveal a chili pepper coming out!

[Kem Ibekwe]

a tree and a river

[Kem Ibekwe]

or a tree and a rock

[David]

combine this idea (or rather questioning statement) that just popped into my head, with whatever you like:

if one functions normally in a dysfunctional reality is one sane?

[shelbey]

i need to hit my idea quota fo the day, so--

1. myth and magic: quill made from a phoenix feather [the non-writing end would be on fire]

2. biotic: a waterfall brimming with question marks

3. old school: analog clocks replacing the wheels on a bicycle [time rolls on]

4. kitschy hi-tech: a british 'cracker' party favor popping open to release irridescent holographs of butterflies

5. a portable window: stick it on whatever wall is blocking your view and look through it, climb through it, to open up the possibilities

[KC]

Tom Peters has the corner on the market on this one. Unquestionably, it should be the exclamation point!!!

[KC]

Sorry! Posted to the wrong post!

[Cyclist Jerseys Clyde]

Thanks for posting. This cracks me up.